Energy Efficiency

If the AC isn’t doing the job, you need a bigger AC, right? Well, how much bigger? “Better go way bigger; you don’t want to experience the cost of system upgrade only to realize that you are still undersized, right? It’s best to play ‘safe’ and get this extra large unit; it’ll definitely do the job; yea, definitely.” Well, you can’t blame a teacher for teaching, you can’t blame a miner for digging and you can’t blame a contractor for selling the higher ticket item.

If you buy a big truck because it is capable of towing a heavy trailer, but you only need to tow that trailer once a year, the powerful truck that you buy will get poor gas mileage all year long just so that it can tow that trailer once per year. It is really worth it? Well, the answer really depends on how many miles that truck is driven per year, right? In actuality, when you work it all out, you usually find that owning the big truck really isn’t worth it and that you would probably be better off owning a smaller more fuel efficient truck. It is cheaper for you to just rent that big truck once a year when you really need it. Now, all of that considered, which truck will the Ford sales representative try to sell you when you show up at the dealership with a fat roll of Ben Franklins; the expensive and highly capable fuel hog of a monster truck or the inexpensive, high MPG smaller truck? In all likelihood, the Ford representative will notice aloud that the color of that monster truck is perfect for you.

So here’s the kicker…. The real truth of the matter is that your truck will never have to tow that trailer, not even once a year; never! The multi-residential housing facilities that you own or manage will never actually have to meet the “maximum potential demand” that your DHW or HVAC representative shows you on his chart of “minimum system requirement standards”. Now, who exactly created those charts? The charts were created by the HVAC and DHW industries, of course. And when were those charts created you might ask? Well, let’s just say that they were created long before energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions became a predominant concern for our country. How did the contractors that installed the HVAC and DHW systems that you pay to operate make their sizing choices? Take into consideration the fact that most systems currently in place are old and they were not chosen for efficiency in the first place.